I repeat my question - name one Founder (and remember some of them lived into the 1830s), who supported your view that anything is Constitutional if the Supreme Court says it is.

Name one Founder (just one) who would have supported Buck V Bell (the violent mutilation of a women, who had committed no crime, by a State government) or the stealing of all private monetary gold by the Federal government (and the voiding of all gold clauses) in 1933 (upheld in 1935).

Name one Founder who supported the idea that the Supreme Court can make blatently unconstituional things constitutional.

There is a power to AMEND the Constitution and to WRITE A NEW CONSTITUTION.

So you're a postmodernist! This all makes sense now, but why didn’t you just come out and say it? Support of the constitution based on 'understanding of reality' is just another way of saying relative support of its principles.

The view of the various Founders is a matter of record - they wrote down what they believed.

And the contempt for the Consitution that the Progressives and the New Dealers had is also a matter of record.

True they were not all as crude as "Teddy" Roosevelt ("to Hell with the Constitution") or as wordy as Woodrow Wilson (hundred of pages "proving" that the neither the Declaration of Indepenence or the Constitution contained any PRINCIPLES that had to be obeyed - they were just tracts for the times.....), but they were fairly clear.

Some of the New Dealers actually repented of what they did - perhaps you shoud read up it.

But the fact remains - there is nothing to "disagree" about.

You are opposed to the Constitution of the United States (to the idea of LIMITED government).

Fair enough are lot of good (yes GOOD) people support unlimited government (because they believe "we could do so much good - if only there were not all these silly outdated rules standing in our way") but at least be honest about.

Do not pretend to support a Constitution whose basic principle (that government should be LIMITED) you oppose.

This is my personal analogy about our current political direction and it is 100% written by me, having no references, but history.

"When there is only one goal and you are told to choose the people that will determine the means to reach it, that is not democracy. Democracy is having the ability to voice alternative options, not the means to fulfill just one goal, but alternative goals.

So when it comes to certain subjects like foreign policy, think of the policies of the Republicans and Democrats as two different rivers reaching the same location.

Why should we care?

The people need an option to choose a river that will flow towards a different location.

If both the Democrat and Republican rivers simply flow into the ground and dry up, having not reached another body of water, they would both be bad goals. I would prefer to choose a river that would flow into an ocean than one that would just dry up.

The two-party system fails because two organizations have consolidated power and have prevented others from competing. In the world of business, duopolies are illegal, so why should two-party systems be allowed? The consequences we face in the future for our continued support of a two-party system will be grave - especially when both rivers collude to produce goals that only dry up.

Washington was a slave holder presiding over a country whose economy was to a very large extent based on slavery and whose policy was to hunt the native population to extinction. Americans prettify their horrific history.

"Being asked to pay $16 million of that doesn't seem too harsh, does it?"

That's not what they're being asked to pay, due to the convoluted nature of the tax code they are being "asked" to pay less, as per the law they can pay less. If you want Apple to pay more then, frankly, we need a simpler tax code that is easier to enforce...

Well, the conversation seems to have wandered since last night, when i couldn't reply (from the US) because of site maintenance. However, I do now, for a fact, what each of the major (and many of the lesser-known) founders wrote, said, and thought about the role of government in the lives of the average citizen. Hamilton, for example, was famously the most pro-government, yet his (entirely legitimate) rationalization of his tax and borrowing ideas was to repay the debts racked up during the previous war. He saw that a country that could not, or would not, pay its debts would have difficulty maintaining national security.

However, the philosophical discussions that took place during, and immediately after, the establishment of the Constitution focused heavily on individual rights, and whether or not even so small a federal government as McGenius notes existed at the time was a threat to liberty. Go back and read the commentaries of the anti-Federalists, or the public and private writings of Jefferson and Madison at the time of Hamilton's peak (around 1792, as a matter of fact) to understand how they viewed it.

Now, if those exact same men had been born in 1965, would they have a different view? Of course. But that's not the point. the point is that Washington and Hamilton's view of taxation as "unpleasant but vital" is not antithetical to small government-types like the tea party; most of them would probably agree with that exact phrasing. However, to suggest that somehow this means Washington (the man who lived in the 18th century, not some hypothetical latter-day reincarnation) would take a middle ground on the issues surrounding today's spending- as it relates to the military, the welfare state and the general apparatus of government- betrays an ignorance of his actual philosophical views. So yes, given that i am educated on what the various founders, including Washington, actually wrote, thought and believed, I do know fora fact that they would not have supported today's government size. You might argue that is irrelevant, and you're welcome to do so. But don't try to pretend we have no idea what the founders would have thought about the nature and role of government in the lives of Americans; it is literally the most well-documented set of opinions they held, both collectively and as individuals.

So you came up with the "Living Document" thing all by yourself? Impressive! Some of us stand on the shoulders of giants. You stand all alone.

Well, do you have time frame for how old a document can be before you can contort it, or can you contort it right away? For example, I just signed a mortgage. How much time has to go by before I can start reinterpreting it to meet my needs. Or, are mortgages immutable whereas the supreme document in the land entirely is not?

Your throw so much stuff up against a wall to see if it will stick I lose track of your point.

There's an amendment process to the Constitution to make changes. For leftists like yourself that's not good enough because you recognize that the amendments you want to include, like New Bills of Rights on taking from one group to give to another, would never pass muster, so you go to case law.

We now have a situation, according to folks such as yourself, that stuff that is in the Constitution is not like the 2nd Amendment, and that stuff that is not in the Constitution really is, Abortion. And thus, we have a pile of poop that is not really based on the Constitution but something else. BUT, you still want to say everything is Constitutional even though nobody can make sense of it just by reading the Constitution.

Congrats!!! You know how to make something simple into a cluster. Just like a high school student cannot do trigonometry but they know mommy and daddy are increasing the Earth's temperature.

This is another rigid definition you are making which doesn't really match with reality. But the Constitutional Republic founded by GW and the others we collectively refer to as our 'fathers' is indeed the one we live in today, regardless of any definition. And the document does have meaning in this context.

They thought of it, founded it (after some bloodshed, fear and luck), and created it. And much of their creation did indeed involve a lot of discussion and hard-nosed comprimising among the varied competing ideas of the time. Any new creation or 're-creation' today would entail much the same kind of political process, but would certainly come to a different result, tho likely quite similar in general.

A caveat, no document created by humans will ever last long if it cannot be adapted to changing circumstances over time (that's, say a hundred years or more).

So you like case law. Given enough time and enough decisions, you suggest that the document itself has little meaning but the cases made afterwards are what matters. You would then agree we're not really a Constitutional Republic anymore because the Constitution isn't the driver, but rather the case law is. I want to live in a Constitutional Republic.

I just want everyone to be treated fair and equally. Perhaps you're right and things are done unequally. A much simplified tax system and smaller government would go a long way to putting everyone on the same playing field and eliminate state favoritism.

Harvard Law School in the early 1900s - they did not like the Constitution (too put it mildy) so they made up the notion it was a "living document" (so they could ignore the actual document - and teach about the Constitution they would have written, via Case Law, instead).

You must have missed the bit where I pointed out that some bad things ARE Constitutional - for example a "post office" and "post roads" (if the Congress wants to do these things it can - see Article One, Section of the Constitution). But the Founders were not Louis XIV (the "Sun King") or Frederick the Great - they did NOT believe in unlimited government. Indeed, to the Founders, even George III and Lord North were what you would call too "Progressive" (i.e. too statist).

If you really want "positive rights" (to goods and services provided at the expense of others - education, health care and on and on) then the United States Consitution is not something you will like - however there are Constitutions that go in for that sort of thing (for example the Soviet Consitition of 1936 - but there are many other "Postitive liberty" Constiutions now).

The Founders were what you would call "Negative" liberty people - not the sort of people who would get tenure at most mordern American universities. Or (to be even handed) who would get jobs in "compassionate conservative" (i.e. wild spending) Bush's cabinet.

George Washington (and the others) would not really be welcome by the establishment of either party today. Of course Washington would have detested big government Democrats such as President Johnson, but he would have detested big government Republcians (such as President Nixon) just as much. And can you see Washington, or any of the Founders, going around with John McCain in Syria trying to get the United States involved in a Civil War?

No - neither can I. Although the Economist magazine would like to pretend that they would.

Here you argue the standard 'constitutional conservative' stance that the fed powers are limited in the constitution. Trouble is this argument ignores 200 years of constitutional law defining the limited reference material in that constitution. The argument is that we 'must' ignore all 200 years of decisions by the SCOTUS (most often with the exception of decisions you personally agree with) because it is all wrong. This argument and yours above is a fallacy.

Just like many of your other arguments, you perpetrate several false concepts that fail to recognize simple and basic principles embodied in the very Constitution you try to interpret. Time for a simple, unbiased course in US civics...

So, Mr. McG you want to return to those days, when the US population was ... hmmm, how do you count that. The local original population (otherwise referred to at the time as 'redskins) was simply not counted and otherwise ignored (when they were not being eradicated). And the slaves were, according to the Constitution, 'other persons' counted as a percentage of a human being for population purposes, but who otherwise had no rights. Still most of these people, and most everyone else were 'rural', that is farmers, did you count their contribution to GDP? Sure, let's go back to those days. Force ppl to leave the cities and 'return to the land', restrict education to only the very few (in this case the propertied, wealthy, and, hmmm, yes only white males need apply to learn to read and write). Perhaps you recall a similar recipe was tried in Cambodia?

Your rigid application of percentages and your rigid interpretation of history that ignores reality, simply fails as an argument to address current conditions in a modern society. Time for you to rethink the entire thing.

If you are referring to Apple in your comment, the company's profits for fiscal 2012 was $41.66 billion. Works out to roughly $120 million per day.

Being asked to pay $16 million of that doesn't seem too harsh, does it? And it was hardly hauled in front of Congress - Apple is simply too popular.

And don't make me laugh with your claim that you are not an American, in a desperate attempt to impart yourself more objectivity. Tea Party talking-points are extremely rarely endorsed by non-Americans. You sound American anyways.